The entrepreneurial adventure begins
I’m Gianfranco Cattel and I’m the owner of the Cattel, which is a company that deals with food supply for catering and Hotellerie. It is a company that has reached the third generation, I have been in the company for twenty years, next year I will celebrate twenty years. But I started when I was 10 years old doing the summer season. At the time, I was employed by my dad and, therefore, I was handling the goods in the rooms of dairy products and then for a short time, for a few years, I also did the summer season going up on the sale trucks for seasonal sales points because the company is still based in Jesolo, that is a touristic area.
Mine, let’s say my summer job was limited to only four days, because in the other two days of the week I had to do my summer homework, since my mother was a teacher. It was a compromise: four days I could work in the company, that for me was a source of pride and joy, and two days I had to do homework. For two years I managed, at 17-18 years, a shop inside a campsite where I had 5 employees, older than me, and then I took a break during the University period in Milan after which I resumed the family activity. After a year during which I was employed by the branch for the Restaurant supply then there was the need to manage the company at 360 degrees, which I have done for twenty years.
It’s a company that I took when it made 25 million turnover, now it’s 105.
The money to start
Having taken over an existing family business, it was not a real startup, so I did not have need to draw personal money to start the company, because the company was already there. But thanks to my previous economy studies, managing the company from the administrative and management side turned out to be easy and spontaneous. For me the numbers are very important, they are in my DNA and so analyzing the numbers I managed to avoid contacts and appeals to credit institutions. The company was already healthy and therefore with this daily or monthly check of flows, of economic-financial indices, it was easier for me to monitor constantly the company’s route and then the company’s development.
This is something that I still follow in first person, that of checking the indices, because, we have invested a lot on financial programs, calculation of financial data and then I have a monthly dashboard of indices that allows me to see at any time where the company is going. Only with a constant control of these numbers, combined with the fact that I am always present in the company, and participating to trade fairs, it makes possible to manage the company quite easily, I find it quite simple, not problematic.
A negative and a positive event
The most negative episode I have experienced happened a year after I arrived at the company, after University, when it was necessary to remove the commercial director that had been in the company for 25 years, so let’s say a little traumatic since the person was not intentioned to leave his job position. Thus, it was necessary an intervention of the general director of the time and a forced removal of the person. De facto, after a year in which I was in the company, I had to invent, reinvent myself as an entrepreneur and organize the management of an entity that I had known only for a year as an employee. So I had about sixty employees to manage, products that I knew little about, because they were those of the restaurant industry, while I previously dealt with dairy products for the retail market. They were different products and the management of those products was different from what I handled before. Before that I had managed few people and very different numbers; either I was sinking or I was learning to swim.
This has been negative precisely because it was sudden but it was perhaps the first of the positive things I’ve lived as I had the chance to demonstrate what I was worth; maybe if I had remained as commercial director for a few years I would have had difficulties to emerge and then the thing let’s say came in handy. As for a more positive aspect of my career, we have come to almost twenty years of work, it’s the fact that two years ago I started an adventure abroad with the opening of a branch in Austria and starting from next year I will follow it in first person because I will devote more time to the Austrian supply chain so I will be often, most of the time abroad. The idea would be to open, before the end of next year, even a branch in Germany, so I will dedicate myself to the German-speaking countries.
Doing business in Italy
The company was born in Italy and the fact that it is a food company and Italian food is known all over the world, these twenty years have been useful for me to acquire knowledge and the specific weight of the company turnover, sufficient to allow me to prospect the development in foreign markets. So this possibility of expanding abroad would not have been there if I had not invested time and resources in the Italian market. So, the development in this market was fundamental and only now I can aspire to do the same kind of profession even abroad, bringing my experience and the contacts I have had in these years with suppliers. Experiences in the large customer market is a fundamental baggage to be able to do an experience abroad, maybe not as a young guy anymore, though now I feel ready and I hope that I will have equally positive results abroad, although it will be difficult, but having made a nice professional journey in Italy, I am confident of being able to have good results abroad too.
The key traits of an entrepreneur
The characteristics that a good entrepreneur must have, first of all, a good entrepreneur mustn’t look at the watch. For the entrepreneur days often fly, he does not realize if it’s time to go home. He must be lucky enough to do a job he loves and that gratifies him and must succeed in having, either from the family he has created or alone, the daily stimuli to achieve success, to have a future perspective for himself and for the company.
However, to have all this, it is also necessary to be able to create a team, a group of collaborators who can understand each other just by looking in each other’s eyes, who can understand what you have in mind, what boils in the pot. Even before you tell them, they already know where do you want to go: this is one thing that I’m experiencing in the latter years with my collaborators. I gave them a path training with an external consultant and so I created a team of executives, who are de facto managers, who will allow me to go abroad in a proper way, to be able to do my work path. So the team is fundamental and then the entrepreneur must have the tenacity to try to pursue, it must never detach, must always have an elastic and sparkling mind, always looking for novelties, never feeling satisfied and to sleep on what has already done. Every day is a new day and therefore it is necessary to improve what has been done until the day before. Without looking at the clock, I notice that I arrive in the evening without realizing it, I think it’s a good thing.
The future for the new generations
For the new generations there certainly is the possibility to show how much they are worth. In the specific case, there have been ten years of crisis, but in the crisis there have actually been so many possibilities of business development. The important this is that the crisis mustn’t be in the head of the people, so I think that if a person has clear what he wants to achieve on a personal basis and maybe even knows a little, that does not hurt, some languages, foreign language, certainly if the person manages to motivate himself and has clear in mind what he wants to do, maybe it’s not as simple as it was in the past years to reach it, however, the thing is doable. The important thing, though, is never give up and maybe listen less to the television, that in certain moments demoralize people and find internally the stimuli to carry out a project. So it is fundamental to have in mind what you want to do and try with your own strength or with some help, maybe even from the outside, of pursuing it daily. Never give up and, above all, have values that allow you to fight, since every day is hard. But maybe you have to do some inner training, character training and surround yourself with positive people, who help you achieve what you are aiming for.
IP Crew
